Two years after the famous 1903 Kitty Hawk flight, brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright built and flew what is credited as the world’s first successful airplane. In the centuries leading up to that monumental moment in aviation history, a number of experimental flying machines were developed in hopes of finally unlocking the secrets of flight. While these early flying efforts may seem to us like failures and slow progressions, the culmination of knowledge gleaned from these attempts eventually allowed for mankind to soar through the skies.